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Italian Wikipedia May Shut Down Due To New Legislation
An anonymous reader writes "Proposed legislation under debate in Italy has Wikipedia warning of a shutdown for the Italian version of the site. They say the law would create 'a requirement to all websites to publish, within 48 hours of the request and without any comment, a correction of any content that the applicant deems detrimental to his/her image.' They further explain. 'Unfortunately, the law does not require an evaluation of the claim by an impartial third judge — the opinion of the person allegedly injured is all that is required, in order to impose such correction to any website. Hence, anyone who feels offended by any content published on a blog, an online newspaper and, most likely, even on Wikipedia can directly request the removal of such contents and its permanent replacement with a "corrected" version, aimed to contradict and disprove the allegedly harmful contents, regardless of the truthfulness of the information deemed as offensive, and its sources.'"
If someone who is offended can require a correction be made without comment, then surely anyone else can be offended by the correction and have it reverted - without comment.
I am offended by your mocking of our laws, I demand you correct your defamatory statements with the much more accurate:
If someone who is offended can require a correction be made, the internet and world as a whole will be such a nicer happier place. With rainbows and ice cream for everyone.
Sincerely, The Italian Parliament
well, I am sure he'll be unpleasantly surprised to find out some people think he is a coat.
You can't handle the truth.
In Germany, it has always been the law that if a newspaper publishes something about you that you think isn't true, they have to publish what you say. So in the next edition you would read something like "We wrote xxx. Mr. X complained about this, and we are required by law to tell you that he claims yyy. This is not necessarily the truth. ".
The best one I ever read was this followed by "we published the article because we received a declaration under oath that xxx is true. We now also received a declaration under oath that xxx is false. We don't know which one, but we know someone lied under oath and passed both statements to the police."
It really depends on what exactly this law says. Best case Wikipedia adds a button where any person who feels offended can post what they claim is the truth, without modifying the article.